The other day while I was watching “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” I heard a girl telling someone outside of my apartment a story about something that had happened over the weekend at the bar.
Apparently, some “drunk skank” had flirted with her boyfriend, so she punched her in the middle of the bar. After getting the gist of the story, my attention span quickly ran out, and I continued to watch my movie.
As I watched, it occurred to me that Audrey Hepburn would have never done that. While hearing the girl outside brag about the bar fight she got into, it made me wonder if our generation has bred a whole new description of “ladies.”
Maybe the reason girls now are less feminine is because of the role models they are given. When I think of celebrity status women 40 or 50 years ago, I think of Jackie Kennedy, Audrey Hepburn and Doris Day.
But when I think of the women we have in the spotlight now, I think of Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and the ever so classy Paris Hilton. Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t see Jackie Kennedy fighting with one of John F.’s ex-girlfriends like Paris Hilton recently did.
And when it comes to real life women, I just can’t imagine my grandmother, as tough as she can be, getting into a bar fight when she was 20. Women then were encouraged to be “ladies.”
It’s not even the fighting that makes me wonder why girls aren’t as ladylike as they used to be. Now it’s no big deal to see a girl wearing a dress and drinking cheap beer out of a can then burping when she’s through. But try doing that a few decades back and someone would have been sent to etiquette school.
Girls obviously aren’t as modest as they used to be. Shirts stop short of belly buttons, and pants are so tight they look as though they were painted on, opposed to the pill box hats and boat neck dresses worn back then.
I have yet to decide if this culture change is for better or for worse. Yes, girls aren’t encouraged to be as feminine as they used to be, but there are still some girls who uphold the ladylike standards that our grandmothers and mothers taught us to have.
Today, being viewed as a lady has much more to do with behavior than it does the way you dress. I hope that someone being referred to as a “lady” is not just a thing of the past and will always be viewed as a compliment to those who deserve it.